Pierre de Fermat
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Aschlafly (talk | contribs) at 05:38, December 15, 2006. It may differ significantly from current revision.
Frenchman Pierre de Fermat (1601–1665) was one of the two leading mathematicians of the early 1600s, the other being Rene Descartes. Fermat was a founder of the modern theory of numbers, discovered the fundamental principle of analytic geometry (independent of Descartes' work) and helped found the theory of probability (with Blaise Pascal). By trade Fermat was a lawyer.
Fermat's most famous equation is Fermat's Last Theorem, which has never been proven by elementary techniques and took more than 3 centuries to prove by any techniques.